Faith schools 'too selective'

Saturday 11 February 2006 20.32 EST
First published on Saturday 11 February 2006 20.32 EST

Faith schools should be prevented from discriminating in the way they select pupils, one of Tony Blair's former advisers has warned.

Baroness Morgan, a director of government relations at Number 10 until last year, said she felt 'uneasy' about some aspects of admissions to single-religion schools. Those which excluded children of other faiths did not encourage tolerance within communities, she added.

A former teacher herself, Morgan's views will be welcomed by Labour MPs worried that church schools - often boasting disproportionately good results - are being colonised by better-off parents prepared to feign religious belief.

They come as a book published this week by the Young Foundation think-tank on the relationship between white and immigrant communities in east London warns that church schools there have fuelled social segregation. White working-class parents who did not want their children educated alongside Bangladeshis had taken refuge in Christian schools, the book argues. In 2002, for example, four church secondary schools in Tower Hamlets had 3 per cent or fewer Bangladeshi pupils, while three non-denominational schools near by had more than 90 per cent.

The book, The New East End, concludes that the borough's Roman Catholic schools have become 'white citadels', with stories of parents baptising children into Catholicism to ensure they got into the right school.

Morgan's intervention follows Blair's agreement last week - as part of negotiations over his schools White Paper - to ban the interviewing of prospective parents, a practice continued by some faith schools.

Morgan, who spoke out in the House of Lords, said that faith schools were clearly very popular with parents, but stronger measures than simply ending interviews would be needed to ensure children from poorer families did not lose out.

'We don't want a situation where a school can't meet parents to talk about the school, but we hear of schools where you are encouraged strongly to make a large payment to the Parent Teacher Association, or the uniforms cost a vast amount of money,' she told The Observer. 'The majority of schools don't do it, but there are still some that do.'

She said that she supported the creation of more multi-faith schools admitting children of all faiths under a strong religious ethos.

The debate over faith schools continues amid struggles between Blair and Labour rebels over his education bill. Compromises proposed by Downing Street have failed to stop the revolt, with dissident MPs saying more than 70 of the 100 original signatories to Martin Salter's alternative White Paper are still inclined to vote against the government.